Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday December 16, 2008 @10:47AM
from the can't-get-there-from-here-in-cupertino dept.

Slatterz writes "With Macworld 2009 mere weeks away, one rumour that seemingly won't die is the idea of a Mac OS X Netbook PC. Asking a company to provide OS X drivers for their netbooks has, up until now, been met with silence, and probably a little quaking on the vendor side as they wait for the heavy footsteps of Apple's army of lawyers. It seems, however, that Realtek, who provide the WiFi chip found in the MSI Wind U100, are dipping their toes into the legally iffy world of the Hackintosh. Forum users at MSIWind.Net asked politely for drivers, and after a lot of patience,
Beta drivers were provided."

There is nothing in the Apple EULA that prevents anyone from creating a driver for their hardware to work with OS X. The fact that RealTek does not make -or may never make- hardware for Macs is immaterial.

I think the bigger thing that component manufacturers are worried about is that Steve Jobs will call up MSI and say "Hey, we'd like to contract with you to develop a Mac netbook based on the Wind to run OS X. Oh, and by the way... don't use any RealTek chips in it."

I think the bigger thing that component manufacturers are worried about is that Steve Jobs will call up MSI and say "Hey, we'd like to contract with you to develop a Mac netbook based on the Wind to run OS X. Oh, and by the way... don't use any RealTek chips in it."

I am not a lawyer but that sounds like tortious endangerment of interstate commerce to me.

I think the bigger thing that component manufacturers are worried about is that Steve Jobs will call up MSI and say "Hey, we'd like to contract with you to develop a Mac netbook based on the Wind to run OS X. Oh, and by the way... don't use any RealTek chips in it."

I am not a lawyer but that sounds like tortious endangerment of interstate commerce to me.

Quite right, you're not. If you're Apple and you approach a manufacturer, nothing prevents you from stating that you don't want to have a particular supplier's products in your custom built product. Now if Apple were to tell MSI that to do business with Apple, they would have to completely drop RealTek as a supplier from all of MSI's products then you might have a point.

Only if you are super blatant about it. Nobody(who isn't a complete idiot) is going to call up and tell the other guy about how he has a personal grudge against RealTek because of their driver support for hackintoshes.

On the other hand, if Steve just happens, on the good faith advice of his engineers, to have some legitimate concerns about the quality of upcoming Realtek chipsets... Well, maybe another supplier would mean reduced liability exposure...

But why would he do that if there is a RealTek driver already? It's not like Macs don't come with expansion card slots (PCI or ExpressCard) that could take a WiFi card with a RealTek chip. Provide drivers for OS X that allow people to buy these cards and use them in a Mac Pro or a MacBook Pro, and then when Apple's looking for their next supplier you can say 'oh, and we already have drivers for your OS so you don't need to spend any money developing them.'

Sorry, are you really claiming here that Apple left the firewire port out for the sake of aesthetics and/or to protect us from the tyranny of a four-pin port?! It was left out as a profit-maximising measure because they know that the MacBook is incredibly popular with musicians and they want to force people who rely on FireWire (i.e. anyone who wants to get multi-channel audio into a laptop at a decent sample/bitrate) into buying the MacBook Pro. Simple as that.

It's true, and thanks to Apple, we are spared the wrath of these genocidal monsters. Four pin firewire has led to the deaths of countless thousands while millions of others slowly starve in the death camps. Thankfully Apple put an end to these Pinochets-in-plastic when they built the new MacBook without the four-pin port. Remember, folks, first they came for the floppy drive, but I did not speak out, because I didn't like floppy disks at all. Then they came for USB 1.1 but I did not speak out because I'm actually fond of faster protocols. Now that they are coming for these Little Eichmanns I can only jump for joy. Apple macht frei!!!

Apple knows how to make a USB port that can also function as firewire - every iPod was like that until they dropped firewire. So, I don't buy the design argument - at least one of those USB ports could have doubled as a firewire port.

Why would it be insane? I was just pointing out that it is possible to use one small connector to do both firewire and usb. Yes, it would require an adapter - but that doesn't stop Apple on the monitor port. Keep one of the USB ports standard and make the other dual-use... space problem solved and most people won't be inconvenienced. Most laptop manufacturers use the little 4-pin firewire connections, so use of an adapter is nothing new.

Wow, some truly insightful "analysis" there, mostly one-line quotes which state that they 'had to' get rid of Firewire to fit the motherboard in a certain way. If Apple wanted Firewire, they could have fitted it in easily (like, for instance, by only having one USB2 port). Every 'pro' user of the MacBook that I know (musicians, photographers, graphic designers) makes extensive use of Firewire peripherals, in fact the MacBook has pretty much been the only reason why companies such as Lacie have continued t

Do you really think that Apple got almost done designing the MacBook, then went "Huh, I guess there's no room left for the FireWire port, bummer."? I suspect that the Apple never intended for the MacBook to have FireWire from the start, and the design reflects this.

One point about RealTek's driver, it looks like a plain Ethernet device from OS X. From what I understand, you need a special program to set the wireless settings. That is, you can't use existing wireless configuration. It also doesn't work as smoothly as Airport, either. What others have done on the MSI Wind is buy a wireless card off eBay that uses the same chipset Apple uses. This way, OS X sees it as an Airport device.

I'm more interested in Apple coming out with a netbook based on the ARM processor that will give me a day's worth of use instead of 4-5 hours on the current netbooks. In addition, I would like to be able to use the device as a tablet so I can jot things down and read PDF documents. Now, that's a netbook! Build it and I will buy.

And even if there were something in their EULA stating that other companies are not allowed to make drivers for their OS, how would that be enforced? I mean they need other companies to provide drivers for their devices, so they can't really be that picky about what drivers they allow or not.

Yeah, well only Vista64 requires signed drivers. It's merely a recommendation for Vista32, nor as anyone ever tried to claim otherwise (this was done, AFAIK, to ease the upgrade from XP to Vista, before MS found out that nobody was upgrading... ironically, bad third-party drivers have caused almost all of my bad experiences in Vista, and having required signed (read: tested to be not utter crap) drivers from the start probably would have gone a long way in avoiding the current disaster). Hell, I think eve

Yes exactly, it's only 64bit where signed means jack - he was talking out of his ass. They were going to require it with 32bit Vista but the screaming from vendors caused them to back off and use Vista as a stepping stone to the next version.

Next version of Windows will be 64bit only and also require signed drivers supposedly. So what he wants will be in the next version, I am sure there will be whining about it then too since you can never please anyone...

It's only REQUIRED in 64bit which is what he is dreaming for Apple to do. It's not a requirement for 32bit. He's apparently claiming Vista doesn't properly enforce driver signing, I'm asking him to tell me how he got around it in the ONE version where it's REQUIRED - 64bit. Neither he nor you have an answer for that I'm betting short of using the driver development shortcuts which anyone creating such a system would have to have too.

Actually, yes. There's a little program you can run that automates the process of pressing F8 and selecting "Disable Driver Signing Enforcement."

And do the guy below, I wasn't talking out of my ass. If you re-read what I said: "And unlike Vista, they could actually enforce their rules." Referring to how Vista lets you click "Install it anyway" or use the program I mentioned earlier to get around the signed driver 'enforcement.'

And I don't want it. I simply said that the only way Apple could keep you

No I read it, I also know how hard it is to get around Vista 64bit driver signing. Sorry but a program to press F8 isn't what I'd be interested in but sure I'd love to know where I can find it:-) I'd like to learn how they got something running that early in the boot process to do this. I'd also like to see just how unobtrusive it is.

On Vista 64 NO you cannot just say install it anyway, if you have an unsigned driver at bootup the system refuses to boot with it and gives you a warning naming the file. You

And not only that, but this is one of the reasons that Darwin was open sourced in the first place. My company has done the odd bit of consulting here and there with other entities that provide all sorts of weird hardware drivers for OS X, and they don't call Apple and ask them for one first.

Because they don't have to. That's part of what Darwin is for. This is FUD, and should be treated as such.

A year and a half ago the Airport card in my G4 iBook died and I had to use a USB dongle from Belkin. Belkin does not support Mac, but the guts were a RealTek. I went to RealTek's website and there were Mac drivers. So it seems to me that RealTek has been producing Mac drivers for quite a while.

It makes business sense... they can sell their chipset as "Mac compatible".

Many manufacturers do not make drivers for the Mac for the same reason that many do not make drivers for *nix. The simply do not want to have the responsibility of support.

This does not mean that no one supports mac. I use a third party wireless device for one of my old Macs. I wanted the 'n' spec, and the only way to get it was to hook up through the USB. It works well enough, not as seamless as built in Airport, but it is, obviously, faster.

Postscript printers are a far cry from your average printer for a household though, I have an a3 ps printer which recently set me back $2.2k an a4 only version costs about $1k, I see most average people spending about 1/5th that much on a crappy non post script printer.

I completely agree with you though, standardization is the key, like we're seeing with usb video, now most new usb webcams are supported out of the box etc.

Last time I read up on the subject, I found Amit Singh's article claiming that various executable files in MacOS X are encrypted and require a 64 bit code delivered by the SMC chip to decode them. Quite foolproof (little chance of things going wrong for users of Apple hardware), not very difficult to circumvent, but 100% necessary to circumvent to get full MacOS X running. It doesn't prevent copying the installer DVD with the encrypted executables, it doesn't prevent installing MacOS X with the encrypted ex

can make drivers for their machines that work in OS X, they just cant put OS X ON their machines nor inform you how to do it.

And that is what makes this story likely to be true. IE Realtek has been asked to provide drivers by people who clearly plan to use those drivers to extend the functionality of devices that apple lawyers keep a real close eye on, with the intent to prevent this application. While Realtek's work wouldn't aid in overcoming copy protections, it probably encourages people to overcome those protections. Clearly taking a close look at laws like the DMCA was required before proceeding, and they apparently came

Really, this is a non-story. RealTek makes GPL drivers for *nix, so I'm sure at some point it wasn't going to be really hard to make a driver for Darwin.

I'm also certain that RealTek makes chips that can be used in USB dongles (RaLink certainly does) so therefore it's a cheap way to provide connectivity to an older Mac which has USB but no wireless (I'm sure there are a few models still in production; I'm not a mac head).

A friend of mine has a Macbook. His Wlan connection didnt work, because aps he was using were too far away. I advised him to buy a cheap usb stick so he could attach it to a usb cable in order to move the antenna around the desk to receive better signal without having to shove the whole Macbook around. I was also warning him about first checking which were supported with his Macbook.

So the realtek driver doesn't show up as an "airport" device; but as some other sort of connection. Does anybody know if this is just realtek being realtek(that is to say, painfully mediocre and not really adequate), or is "airportness" like CD-Burning support, something that is confined to Apple-shipping hardware by design?

I don't know, but some early revisions of the Linksys WMP54G were compatible with Macs, simply because the Linksys and Apple Airport card used the exact same reference design with no changes. They show up in the Airport menu as "third party" but work exactly like the built-in airport. Later revisions used a smaller version of the chipset though, and they weren't Mac compatible.

Re-writing the GP's point "is airport-support like cd recording support, so third party wifi cards suffer from the same integration issues as third party CD-Rs, which aren't quite supported?". It wasn't that unparsable to begin with though.

Sorry about the bad wording. On Apple machines, Apple's built in CD burn support works only with optical drives shipped by apple. My understanding is that there is something baked into the firmware that identifies them to the system.
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipping Drive)
is what you will see in system profiler.

This is a deliberate move on Apple's part, since third party burn tools work with any drives, and there have been various hacks at various times to make Apple tools work with third party drives.

So the realtek driver doesn't show up as an "airport" device; but as some other sort of connection. Does anybody know if this is just realtek being realtek(that is to say, painfully mediocre and not really adequate), or is "airportness" like CD-Burning support, something that is confined to Apple-shipping hardware by design?

According to this page last updated in 2007 [google.com], the driver that provides a common API for wireless devices appears to be poorly documented and closed source.

were implemented as Ethernet devices with vendor-specific setup utilities.

And unfortunately still do install vendor-specific setup utilities, despite adding nothing positive to the process and only yielding more confusion to the end user as to whether to a use vendor-specific or Windows solution.

While everyone is asking why this would be a legal problem, I can only assume that the writers of these articles are taking the view that if Realtek have produced these drivers as part of some future OSX-based netbook then they would probably be protected by some kind of NDA with Apple. Obviously if this rather unlikely scenario is assumed correct then Realtek would potentially be breeching said hypothetical NDA by providing the beta drivers to members of the public.

Which is probably as good as saying Realtek has no such agreement with Apple.

I don't think Apple will produce a traditional net book. Look for something like a larger iPhone/Ipod Touch or a 12" Mac Book Air (that is so light weight you can tie a string to it and use it for a kite).

Doesn't the iPhone/iTouch do everything that any net-book can do plus more? Apple could make an accessory for these that supplied a larger screen and keyboard. The iPhone could dock into the larger unit whenever a larger screen/keybord is wanted/needed.

While this effort might be targeted at the MSI Wind, the work performed should allow any device that use the chipset to work with MacOS X. Think of PCI cards for MacPros, or USB sticks allowing older Macs to get 802.11N support.

I might have agreed with this (or rather, with criticism of manufacturers releasing "Draft N" hardware) 18 months back. However, 802.11n has been awaiting final release for ages, and it supposedly *still* isn't due until the end of next year. That's a ridiculous length of time.

According to the date on this article [pcworld.com], the first "draft N" routers were already out more than 2.5 years ago. Slap another year on that and you're talking up to 3.5 years wait for someone who wanted an official 802.11n device instead

OMG OMG OMG!
Some company is actually writing drivers for Mac OS X!
That's about bloody time! Everyone is wining on Apple to write drives for every thinkable gadget out there when it should be pretty obvious to ask the manufacturer of that gadget to do just that. Is this so hard?! It's not Apple's fault nor responsibility that MP3 player X doesn't integrate with iTunes, or cell phone Y with iSync, or video card Z.. or.. or..

Everyone is wining on Apple to write drives for every thinkable gadget out there when it should be pretty obvious to ask the manufacturer of that gadget to do just that. Is this so hard?! It's not Apple's fault nor responsibility that MP3 player X doesn't integrate with iTunes, or cell phone Y with iSync, or video card Z

And yet people use those same arguments as the reason Linux isn't ready...

All Linux needs is a dedicated hardware manufacturer that is creating complete solutions for users in hardware and software. For example, the entire OS X, iTunes, iPud, iTunes store solution. Where are the applications like that?

The driver is not specifically for the wind. That's the same chip used in cheap USB wireless adapters like this one [geeks.com] and RealTek has been providing their OS X driver for some time. The driver and associated utility do not work very well, FWIW, and I don't suggest trying to use them with a Mac unless you really have no other option.

I saw someone make a comment, and I don't remember who or where, but I think it's insightful. Netbooks should be thought of more as larger, more capable PDA's/Smartphones, than they should as smaller, less capable computers. Given that premise, it would make sense to use a modified version of Apple's iPhone/iPod Touch OS with slightly expanded capabilities, instead of trying to get a stripped down Mac OS X to work well on a netbook.

I think Apple might find they *could* build a winning Netbook if they took t

I saw someone make a comment, and I don't remember who or where, but I think it's insightful. Netbooks should be thought of more as larger, more capable PDA's/Smartphones, than they should as smaller, less capable computers. Given that premise, it would make sense to use a modified version of Apple's iPhone/iPod Touch OS with slightly expanded capabilities, instead of trying to get a stripped down Mac OS X to work well on a netbook.

I think Apple might find they *could* build a winning Netbook if they took that approach. Maybe they already are. Apple likes to deny they are doing something right up until they announce at WWDC.

From my original post. ..". ..it would make sense to use a modified version of Apple's iPhone/iPod Touch OS with slightly expanded capabilities. .."

There's no reason the modified version of the OS for the Netbook couldn't have a lot of those things added to it. The iPhone OS already has the capability to add applications. So, Apple could either port Open Office, or their own iWork productivity suite (perhaps a stripped down 'express' edition). Apple could port iChat for the netbook to add instant messagi

and make a "dock unit" with screen/keyboard, bigger battery and appropriate software which existing iPhones/iTouch handhelds slide into. The millions of existing users of these gadgets would be able to expand their handy pocket computers into net-books whenever they wanted to.

A lot of the weaknesses you bring up are either the fault of or related to the limitations of the device, not the software. Copy/paste seems to be a mechanical issue (I'm not sure how you'd work highlights using multitouch). The OS can actually do multitasking: The phone, texting, and mail apps all run at least some background processes and the phone and text app can both foreground themselves. A decision was simply made to prevent other apps from multitasking in order to conserve the very small memory fo

Here is an opportunity for an enterprising company. Make a "dock unit" for the iPhone/iTouch which has a screen/keyboard and battery. I don't think Apple's lawyers would get antsy if someone turned Apple's handheld computers into a net-book this way. How much do screens and keyboards cost? After all, how many "sound docks" are available for iPods?

Hackintosh community has been delighted to have realtek drivers for OSX for some time now. Asus P5W-DH mobo, for example, comes with realtek 8187 wifi and is fully working with OSX for more than a year.

Apple has a history of allowing development by third parties for a time, and then ordering a "cease and desist" leading to a loss of the development costs and killing any future profit. I suspect Jobs fears someone actually doing apple better than apple. Just a guess on my part, but it would no doubt erode his business model. As I remember he killed the upgradable Umax clones etc This is only a driver, but...

They could buy a Apple mini, download XCode (or install from DVD), launch XCode and code kernel extension of whatever chip they will support. Others could ship PCI/PCI-X cards based on their chip and put "OS X compatible" to the box.

They don't do it and yet they help hackintosh community or something?

It seems Apple got rid of Realtek junk on next edition of Macs and someone is out to take revenge.

I'd rather run free software like Ubuntu that they *want* to be freely run though, rather than software like OSX where, even when you bought and own it, they are going to try to tell you what you can and can't do with it.

Irrespectively of discussions on the morality of the specific things asked, Ubuntu has loads of (is mostly?) GPL software, which is vastly criticized by BSD aficionados precisely because "they are going to try to tell you what you can and can't do with it", so you might want to be more careful about the criticisms you level at people.